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Ten years ago, when our firstborn was a new baby, she projectile spat up on my MacBook, delivering a fatal blow to my only computer. Newly living on one meager income, we couldn’t afford to replace it. My husband agreed to let me use his MacBook, with the promise that I wouldn’t use it around our baby, who would do her best impersonation of a fountain several times a day.
Literally the next day, our daughter fried my husband’s computer in the same manner she destroyed mine. My husband was not thrilled (this is an understatement), and I brought his computer to at best get repaired, or at least have its data salvaged, at a local computer store. A week later, we were told they could do neither, and that I would have to come pick it up.
We were sharing one car, so I walked to the computer repair store with our baby in a stroller. On our way home with the computer stored under the stroller, a torrential downpour began. I ran inside with the baby, forgetting the computer under the stroller outside.
If there was any hope of salvaging the computer before that monsoon, that hope was now gone.
I WAS SO IN LOVE WITH MY WIFE, BUT ON OUR WEDDING NIGHT WE KNEW IT WAS A MISTAKE
My husband, the saint that he was, never freaked out, though he would have been justified in so doing. He merely said, through gritted teeth, “I wish that you had made different choices.” And he moved on, never throwing it in my face in the last decade. He’s never even told the story to anyone, let alone publicly, lest he embarrass me.
Sometimes in marriage, a spouse behaves badly. Like, really badly. And part of being married is bearing the frustration of that behavior in a way that is not destructive to the relationship. Sometimes that’s really hard, if you don’t believe me, you can just ask my husband.
He isn’t perfect either; but you won’t hear me tell his stories of thoughtlessness or wrongdoing. Because I’d like to stay married to the wonderful man I’m with.
A DISTURBING GEN Z SOCIAL MEDIA TREND THREATENS AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT INSTITUTION
Recently, a TikTok video from a very different kind of wife went viral. A woman named Hannah, who posts under the handle @healing_saddie, spent a week upstairs with her son, deciding inexplicably to isolate after contracting COVID in the year 2024 (I have questions, but whatever). When she came downstairs, the kitchen was… not in great shape.
The video is pinned on her profile, she’s proud of having gone viral with a rant seen by over four and a half million people about the state her husband left her kitchen in.
The comments on the video went wild on her husband for leaving the kitchen in such a state of disarray and decay.
Some even claimed Hannah’s experience is an example of being a “married single mom,” a comment that garnered hundreds of thousands of ‘likes.’
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Hannah made her husband the target of the entire Internet, who used her story to claim that modern marriages simply weren’t working.
Inadvertently, Hannah did in fact highlight why many modern marriages are failing, but not because husbands don’t chip in on household chores.
Husband-bashing and shaming has become an entire genre of Internet content for modern women, who on one hand demand respect (in the form of cleaning the kitchen, apparently) but are all too willing to publicly disrespect their husband, shaming them for the world to ridicule and despise.
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Women who claim to want a man to treat them well, but do not show that same courtesy in return. Some advice, put simply: You get what you give.
That’s not to say that all men (or women) would behave perfectly if just paired with the perfect spouse. But when someone (and let’s be honest, it’s usually the wife) complains publicly about their spouse, it’s immediately clear that they in all likelihood have the spouse that they deserve and that they’re asking for. They value the validation of internet commenters more than they value the sanctity, happiness and longevity of their marriage.
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I don’t pity women like Hannah, quite the opposite. I feel for their husbands. I shudder to imagine what it’s like to live with someone who thinks so little of publicly humiliating the person they have pledged their loyalty and devotion to.
Next time you see a woman publicly trading their marriage for likes and affirmation, at the expense of their husband, say a quiet prayer for him. He’s going to need it.
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